


Something from Nothing

by squirenonny



Series: Voltron: Duality [8]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: At least until season 3 drops and maybe smashes all my headcanons, Gen, Part of the Dualityverse but also fits with canon, Rolo defected from the Galra army, Takes place before they met Nyma, half-Galra Rolo, then built Beezer out of a stolen cash register
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 05:32:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11593965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squirenonny/pseuds/squirenonny
Summary: Rolo needs food. Or money. Preferably both. He does NOT need his conscience getting in the way.





	Something from Nothing

**Author's Note:**

> For the Somebody who requested Dualityverse Rolo post-Empire but pre-Nyma. <3

Rolo mastered the art of creating something from nothing at an early age. When he was eight, he’d fashioned a passable imitation of a soldier out of the lanky, funny-eyed halfbreed nobody who’d grown up in the Nursery. When he was nine, faced with the choice of _victory or death_ , he’d carved out a third option for himself: escape. When he was ten, he’d built a functional ship from nothing but sad eyes, quick fingers, and the same stubbornness that had earned him so many punishments back in the Galra Empire.

Now he was sixteen, and attempting his greatest feat yet: creating food from the dust gathering in the corners of his stolen, patched-up ship.

“Are you _sure_ you checked the secondary cargo hold?” Rolo called over his shoulder.

Beezer’s buzzing reply echoed in the large, empty space, and Rolo sighed.

“I don’t care if _you’re_ not hungry. _You_ don’t need to eat.”

Offended, Beezer chirruped a staccato retort.

Rolo turned, pulling off his cap to run his fingers through his hair. “Try?” he asked. “How’re you gonna _try_ eating? You wanna shove some nutrient goo down your output slot? Cause I ain’t gonna be the one cleaning that out.”

Beezer gave a rather prim-sounding squelch as he emerged from behind a row of empty barrels. Rolo’s lips twitched.

“I’ll be sure to add _taste simulator_ to the list. You want that before or after the wormholer?”

Beezer spat a length of tape out at him, then retracted it. It wasn’t a gesture Rolo had seen before from the little cyber-unit, but that was Beezer—always adapting. Rolo supposed the prickly attitude would have made this AI a bad fit for most jobs, which was how he’d managed to buy it from a pawn shop for less than a hundred GAC (stolen, of course; Rolo hadn’t cashed an honest paycheck in his life, and he wasn’t about to start now).

Whatever the case, Rolo was glad he’d picked that particular AI chip for his first attempt at a custom-built cyber unit. Despite the attitude, despite the admittedly poor dexterity afforded by the one-time cash register that served as Beezer’s chassis… Rolo wouldn’t trade Beezer for all the wealth in the universe.

Rolo had created a lot of things from nothing, but Beezer was without a doubt his finest work. Wasn’t every day a mongrel deserter carved out a space to call his own and built himself a family—however odd and smart-mouthed that family might be.

His stomach rumbled again, reminding him that, yes, he had let himself run out of rations again. He’d had to spend the last of his GAC on spare parts for the _Harbinger_ after she’d gotten banged up in an encounter with some jumped-up renegades. They’d seen the Galran lettering on her hull and opened fire, never mind any ash-brain with a spark of ship-smarts could see she wasn’t standard-issue.

So now here he was: hungry, broke, hated by half the universe, and feared by the rest.

With a sigh, Rolo pushed away the crate of ragged tunics he’d been digging through. He stood, stretching his arms over his head. “All right. Time for us to find a nice, quiet swap moon where we can kick up a fuss.”

* * *

Well, the moon they found wasn’t exactly _quiet_ , but it would do.

Rolo had held out some thought for smashing open a cash register to make a quick buck, but he couldn’t look at the vrekking things without thinking of Beezer. There was always picking pockets, he supposed, but that was far too likely to get him caught, as he’d never quite found the patience to learn the deft touch it required.

“That’s our last resort,” he’d told Beezer in an undertone. He was wrapped head to toe in an old, ragged gray cloak, the hood pulled up, with oversized gloves on his hands and a gutted Ventroivian respirator mask secured over his face. You never could be too careful when you were half Galra, whether this place turned out to be under Zarkon’s magnanimous rule or not. Best not to show a sliver of purple skin until he had his food and was on his way back to the little surface shuttle he’d brought down from the _Harbinger_. (A Galra ship was another thing it was best not to go flaunting where anyone might see.)

Beezer made the same suggestion he made any time they needed money, and Rolo rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, glad for the mask that hid his involuntary smile.

“Sorry to burst your bubble, bud, but swapping you for a regular cash register never works as well as you seem to expect.”

Beezer swung around in front of Rolo, his pixelated eye-screen dilating.

Rolo laughed, pushing him aside. “You been hanging out with somebody’s kits behind my back or something? Jeez, and here I thought I could avoid the whining and the begging if I stuck with inorganic lifeforms.” Beezer tipped himself just a little more to one side, wobbling on legs that were never meant to be legs at all, and Rolo reached out to steady him. “All right, all right. I still say a pity play’s the way to go, but we’ll do your thing before I try lifting a purse. Fair?”

Beezer chirped once, settling back in at his usual place, half a step behind Rolo and close enough to touch. Always close enough to touch. Neither of them was rich enough in luck or in friends to risk getting separated.

They spent some time just wandering the market—not the cleanest or the most organized place he’d been, but there was a certain kind of deliberation about it. Whoever ran this place ran a tight ship, and it drew a wider crowd than the starless pits he usually went to for supplies. He wouldn’t call anyone here an easy mark, but they _could_ be taken if he was smart about it.

Eventually, he spotted them. A pair of Demxa, one a child, the other fully grown. They sat near a structure that might once have been a fountain, though it had since been turned into a planter full of hardy local shrubs. Demxa were an amphibious species, though it was rare to see them this far from a hospitable lake or sea. The full body suits they wore would keep their skin moist, and the metallic crescents covering nose and mouth would adjust the humidity of the air to something less abrasive to their lungs.

And hey, if they could afford a getup like that, they couldn’t be hurting too bad for cash.

Rolo altered his breathing, making himself sound just a touch winded, and sat on the rim of the fountain-turned-planter with a soft grunt. The Demxa child leaned around their parent, black eyes wide and glistening in the synthetic sunlight overhead. The fin on their head, gray edged in teal, quivered as they looked at him, then up at their parent.

“Long way from home?” Rolo guessed, stooping down to be on a level with the child. “Such a brave kit you are.”

The parent shifted slightly, cutting off Rolo’s view of the child. “No farther than you, I’d guess.” Their voice was slightly garbled by their mask, but not so much so that his translator couldn’t pick out the words.

Rolo flashed a grin the Demxa couldn’t see. “No jobs on Ventroivia these days, specially not for kids like me with no training and no… higher connections. Gotta do what I can if I want to eat.” He tapped the side of his mask twice. “’s a shame no one wants to hire a kit they can’t even see.”

“Photosensitivity?” the Demxa asked.

“Atmospheric, actually. Too much oxygen. Can’t take this crud off without breaking out something awful, and I’d really rather keep my hide intact, if you know what I mean.”

They gave him a sympathetic look, and the child’s hand darted to the skin around their eyes—the only part of their body not kept constantly moist. The skin had a slightly chapped look to it, and it was red, like it had been the victim of constant rubbing.

Despite himself, Rolo felt a pang of sympathy.

“A-anyway.” He rubbed the back of his neck, or tried to. He’d forgotten about his cloak, and his fingers tangled in the hood, nearly pulling it off his head. “I, uh, had to sit down. Rest for a while.” He paused, every scrap of self-preservation yelling at him to finish the con and get away with his cash. “So what brings you all the way out to a place like this?”

“My mate,” the Demxa said. “They were taken by the Galra.”

The breath went out of Rolo, and with it, all thoughts of conning this family. “I’m sorry,” he said, voice dropping low.

The Demxa bowed their head. “We knew it was only a matter of time before they came for us, so… We left. Our passage only took us this far.”

“You have somewhere to go?”

“A contact on Ussa-4. But it’s a null point if we don’t find a ship that can get us there within three cycles, and no one here seems interested in moving refugees.”

“I’ve got a ship.”

The words were past Rolo’s lips before he could think better of them. Behind him, Beezer whistled in alarm. There were no real words to the whistle, just a general sense of, _who’s conning who now?_

Maybe he was right. But Rolo didn’t take back the offer.

The Demxa stared at him, hope warring with suspicion on their face. “For what price?”

“Food,” he said, one hand coming to rest over his gut. “I’d do it for one lousy meal, honestly, but I wouldn’t say no to more if you can spare it.”

Black eyes widened, the fin on their head quivering in what Rolo thought might be pity. Figured. He’d picked exactly the right mark, only his own vrekking conscience had to go and muck things up.

“All right,” the Demxa finally said. “Thank you.”

* * *

A short while later, they were loaded up, the Demxa and their kit with a few paltry packs of belongings, Rolo and Beezer with a solid two weeks worth of rations. Three if he stretched it.

Rolo kept his mask and robe on, claiming to have moderated the ship’s atmosphere as best he could for his guests. Beezer kept up a steady stream of complaints that soon devolved into grouchy cursing as he realized Rolo wasn’t backing down.

“It’s a short jump anyway,” Rolo reasoned, entering the coordinates. “We got our food, and, hey! We helped someone. That’s not half bad for a day’s work.”

Beezer made a sound very like a snort.

With a sigh, Rolo eased them into open space, then got their heading and engaged the sublight engines. “I know,” he said. “ _I know._ But I couldn’t just leave ‘em. They’re just trying to survive, same as us.”

Beezer was silent and, glancing at the back of the cockpit to be sure he’d secured the door, Rolo let down his hood, took off his mask, and slouched down in his seat. He tipped his cap forward to cover his eyes.

“It’s a shit universe,” he said to no one in particular. “But that don’t mean I have to help it along.”


End file.
